Part 3 (1/2)

Theorists hence go on to found a system upon these individual interests, and say: Wants are riches: Labor is riches: The obstacle to well-being is well-being: To ive food to industry

Then co of obstacles is the developing and propagating of riches, what more natural than that he should bend his efforts to that point? He says, for instance: If we prevent a large i it This obstacle severely felt, obliges individuals to pay, in order to relieve the the of this obstacle, will thereby reat, and the mineral scarce, inaccessible, and of difficult and distant transportation, in the same proportion will be the number of laborers maintained by the various branches of this industry

The sa will lead to the suppression of machinery

Here are men who are at a loss how to dispose of their wine-harvest

This is an obstacle which otherfor them by the manufacture of casks It is fortunate, say our statesmen, that this obstacle exists, since it occupies a portion of the labor of the nation, and enriches a certain nuenious machine, which cuts down the oak, squares it, ether, forms them into casks The obstacle is thus diminished, and with it the profits of the coopers We must prevent this Let us proscribe the hly this sophism, it is sufficient to remember that human labor is not an _end_, but a _means_ _It is never without employment_ If one obstacle is removed, it seizes another, and mankind is delivered from two obstacles by the same effort which was at first necessary for one If the labor of coopers becomes useless, it must take another direction But hat, it may be asked, will they be remunerated?

Precisely hat they are at present remunerated For if a certain quantity of labor becoinal occupation, to be otherwise disposed of, a corresponding quantity of wages must thus also beco employment, it would be necessary to prove that mankind will cease to encounter obstacles In such a case, labor would be not only i to do, because we should be all-powerful, and our _fiat_ alone would satisfy at once our wants and our desires

III

EFFORT--RESULT

We have seen that between our wants and their gratification many obstacles are interposed We conquer or weaken these by the eeneral terms, that industry is an effort followed by a result

But by what do we ? By the _result_ of our effort, or by the _effort itself_? There exists always a proportion between the effort eress consist in the relative increase of the second or of the first term of this proportion?

Both propositions have been sustained, and in political econo to the first system, riches are the result of labor They increase in the same ratio as _the result does to the effort_ Absolute perfection, of which _God_ is the type, consists in the infinite distance between these two terms in this relation, viz, effort none, result infinite

The second system maintains that it is the effort itself which forression is the increase of the _proportion of the effort to the result_ Its ideal extreme may be represented by the eternal and fruitless efforts of Sisyphus[7]

[Footnote 7: We will therefore beg the reader to allow us in future, for the sake of conciseness, to designate this system under the term of _Sisyphisements production,--as powerful e of produce, which allows us to profit by the various natural agents distributed in different degrees over the surface of our globe; the intellect which discovers, experience which proves, and eically inclines to every thing which can auges, monopolies, restrictions, prohibitions, suppression of machinery, sterility, etc

It is well to reuided by the principle of the first systericulturist, manufacturer, th of his intellect to do better, to do more quickly, more economically,--in a word, _to do more with less_

The opposite doctrine is in use with legislators, editors, statesmen, men whose business is to make experiments upon society And even of these we may observe, that in what personally concerns _themselves_, they act, like every body else, upon the principle of obtaining froreatest possible quantity of useful results

It erate, and that there are no true _Sisyphists_

I grant that in practice the principle is not pushed to its extremest consequences And thisprinciple, because the absurd and injurious results to which it leads, cannot but check it in its progress For this reason, practical industry never can admit of _Sisyphism_ The error is too quickly followed by its punishment to remain concealed But in the speculative industry of theorists and states time followed up, before the complication of its consequences, only half understood, can prove its falsity; and even when all is revealed, the opposite principle is acted upon, self is contradicted, and justification sought, in the incomparably absurd modern axiom, that in political economy there is no principle universally true

Let us see then, if the two opposite principles I have laid down do not predominate, each in its turn;--the one in practical industry, the other in industrial legislation

I have already quoted soeaud in two separate characters, the agriculturist and the legislator

As agriculturist, Mr Bugeaudlabor, and obtaining bread cheap When he prefers a good plough to a bad one, when he improves the quality of his manures; when, to loosen his soil, he substitutes as much as possible the action of the atmosphere for that of the hoe or the harrohen he calls to his aid every improvement that science and experience have revealed, he has, and can have, but one object, viz, _to diminish the proportion of the effort to the result_ We have indeed no other riculturist, or of thehow far he has succeeded in lessening the one, while he increases the other; and as all the farmers in the world act upon this principle, we , no doubt for their own advantage, to obtain at the lowest price, bread, or whatever other article of produce theythe effort necessary for obtaining any given quantity thereof